


My Life as Emily Bridger

by 20SomethingSuperHeroes



Series: Memoirs of a Jedi Apprentice [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Adoption, Characters Watching Star Wars, College, Cowboys & Cowgirls, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Horses, Identity Reveal, Pets, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Secret Identity, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-12 23:59:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13558344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/20SomethingSuperHeroes/pseuds/20SomethingSuperHeroes
Summary: Ereh Saw Yzil concludes her memoir with an account of her new life in exile on a strange planet. She also shares the story of how she finally learned the truth about what happened to the Jedi.





	My Life as Emily Bridger

PART I

During that nap I took, my mind replayed the scenes on Shent and out in space over and over again. Master Nish died in my arms at least three times, and each time the outcome was the same, and I left the cave covered in blood. The Clones fell to my lightsaber, the green blade contrasting with the red blaster shots made a chaos of color. I got into the N-1 fighter with R17-M3 and we rolled around in space, chased by ARC fighters and a hungry black hole. It ended with us falling in a ball of fire, my ship was ripped to shreds and M3 with it. “M3...M3…” I muttered the droid’s name over and over again in my sleep, I reached out to try and save him but he broke into pieces out of my reach and blew away in the wind and fire. 

I woke up. I had trouble at first remembering where I was. A strange, dark room. I remembered the crash from the dream. I remembered the medical center. The Bridgers. Arriving at the house earlier in the day. 

What was this planet called? Earth. A planet that had never had contact with other worlds. The authorities would have me taken away if they found me. The Bridgers were hiding me. 

I spent a while lying awake in the little guest bed. “Poor M3,” I said to myself. “Poor M3. Poor little droid.”

I was thirsty. I sat up and licked my parched lips. I heard a whirring noise outside of my room. I stood up and opened the door.

Jean Bridger was in a little room next to my own, sitting in front of a machine that she was running a piece of cloth through. She removed a pin from the cloth and put it in a cushion attached to her wrist. She was also wearing a pair of lenses in front of her eyes, supported on her face by a thin wire frame. 

Pausing from her work, she happened to look up and see me. “You’re awake,” she said. “Can I get you something?”

“I’m thirsty,” I said. 

Jean removed the lenses from her face. “I can get you a drink,” she said. She stood up and left the little room, which appeared to be a workroom of some sort. Entering the kitchen, she got a glass from the cupboard and poured water into it from a dispenser built into a large white machine. She gave me the glass. I drank.

“How are you feeling?” she asked me.

I took a moment. “In pain, still. But stiff.”

“Want me to check your bandages?”

“Sure.”

“Here, let me get you some more water.” She took my glass back and refilled it, then returned it to me. She then opened a paper bag set on the counter and retrieved some bottles. 

“This one says you need to take it with food. Are you hungry?”

“Sure.”

She opened a different bottle. “This one you can take right away, but you need to be taking it every four hours. Remind me to set an alarm for you.” She handed me a pill. I swallowed it with the water. We returned to my room. I laid down on the bed, and she got some new wrappings from somewhere and changed the bandages on my legs and arms. She had me tell her how tight I wanted it so the wrappings were comfortable but not too tight or too loose. 

“Where’s George?” I asked her.

“He’s in the pasture. He said he’d go back to watching over the remains of your spaceship once he’d taken care of the cows.”

“Cows? What are cows?”

“Animals that we raise here.”

“Okay. Are they friendly?”

“Mm, they’d rather not be bothered. Unless you have food for ‘em.”

I laughed. I used the restroom and then went to the kitchen. Jean got food for me out of the white machine which I figured was a refrigeration device. 

“Are you vegetarian or anything like that?” she asked me.

“No. I eat whatever I’m served.”

“Well, are you hungry for anything in particular?”

Something sweet. “Do you have any fresh fruit?”

“Not fresh, but still good,” she said, opening her refrigerator. “Cantaloupe. Will that do ya?” I nodded. “There’s leftover potatoes and beans as well. Sound good? It’s all vegetables. I could throw in some ham if you wanted.”

“Just the vegetables are fine for now.”

She put some of the food on a plate and heated it up in a small, rectangular cooking machine between her cupboards, then added some fruit on the side.

“Just some mashed potatoes. And beans. And a little cantaloupe on the side so you get your fruit.” She set a dish in front of me. A lumpy white mash. Some large brown seeds in a darke sauce. A bright orange fruit. She prepared similar plate for herself. She also got out a container of white liquid from her refrigerator. “Would you like some milk?” she asked, holding up the white container.

“Milk from what?”

“Cows.”

“Your cows?”

“No,” she shook her head. 

“I’ll try some,” I said. She poured two glasses and set them on the table. 

“Nah, George and I, we raise our cows to sell for their meat. If we were raising them for milk, that would be a whole different ball game. There’s equipment and special farms you’ve got to have for dairy cows. Meat cows are minimal effort, big pastures and fences and putting up with bovine stupidity on occasion. But a lot less effort than dairy. Do they drink milk where you’re from?”

I sipped the white cow’s milk. “Yes. There’s many varieties of it.” I ate some of the white mash. “What’s this called again?”

“Potatoes. It’s a vegetable.” She handed me two small shakers and a little tub. “Here’s salt and pepper you can put on it, as well as a little butter, also made from milk. But George and I, we put either our beans or our gravy on it.”

I held up the white shaker and sprinkled a little of its contents on the potatoes. I extended a finger to pick up the little crystals that came out, and I tasted them. Salt. Just like the salt flats on Zondel-5, I remembered the taste from when General Grievous had shoved me to the ground, from when I had tripped and fallen many times during the ground battle.

Jean opened the plastic tub. Butter was yellow, and she placed some of it on a dull knife she was using to drop it onto her potatoes. I did the same. The potatoes were warm enough still to melt the butter. The salt and butter definitely brought out the taste. The beans were a little stale, but still savory. And the cantaloupe was dense, but very watery and sweet. 

Jean set down another pill by my glass of milk. “Before I forget, you should take that.”

I took the pill with a swallow of milk. I finished the food on my plate. “That was good food, thank you.”

“Well, do you want to go see what George is doing?” That implied taking a look at the wreckage of my ship.

“Fine with me,” I said. 

Jean took my plate and hers to the sink and rinsed them, then she took our milk glasses. “Go get your shoes on,” she said to me. She went to her room to put on her shoes while I got on mine. Then we went out a door in the kitchen to a garage. There was a small vehicle parked there, a small cab with a white canopy--and tires. She opened the garage door with a button on the wall. Then we sat in the little cab. She turned it on with an inserted key, and she drove it out onto the open driveway and to the pasture.

As we crossed the yard, the four-legged creature I had seen earlier came running up to us. And it continued to follow as we drove into the open field.

“What kind of animal is that?” I asked her.

“That’s a dog. We keep her as a pet. We call her Mag--short for Maggie.”

Mag fell a considerable distance behind the cab and watched us drive away.

I would have thought a vehicle with wheels would not ride so smoothly, especially in the rough terrain, but this cab moved swiftly.

“So this planet doesn’t have repulsor technology yet? No floating vehicles?”

“No,” Jean shook her head. “They got floating cars where you’re from?”

“Yeah.”  
She smiled to herself. “When I was your age, people said we would have them by now.”

“What happened?”

“Beats me. They invented nuclear weapons instead. Didn’t use them, but still made them. We’ll get off the ground someday, I hope.”

Jean didn’t have a very high opinion of the other people on this planet. I didn’t speak again for the rest of the ride. 

The sky was nearly cloudless and what few there were were small and puffy, kind of like the mashed potatoes I had just eaten. The ground was rolling hills of red-brown dirt and sand with short grasses and scrubby bushes growing out of it. In the distance were brown cliffs of the same type of smooth-faced red rock and, rising behind us, the huge mountains I had seen on the drive from town. It was late afternoon, so the rock formations were fairly glowing in the light. Off in the distance behind a fence, I saw a group of black creatures roaming around and grazing.

We drove up to a fence, and Jean got out to open and shut a gate. Down by the far end of this section of pasture was a pillar of smoke. George’s bigger vehicle was parked close by. George saw our approach and waved to us. 

Jean stopped her cart a few meters away from George. I got out of it slowly, looking at the crash site. The smoke was fuming from the remains of the N-1 fighter’s cockpit. Both of the jet engines and the end tail had been broken off. The lid of the cockpit was now shards of blackened glass, and after I had climbed out it seemed that the interior had exploded and completely burned. Smoke came out around the sides of the cockpit--and from the inside of the droid socket. There was a strong smell of burnt fuel, enough to make me want to cough again.

George walked up to us. He had been wearing a scarf over his face, but he pulled it off to speak. “Well, how do you like that?” he said to me.

I couldn’t really find any words to make a comment on the sight. I noticed, however, the skid marks in the ground behind the fighter cockpit--massive dents in the hard desert soil--and a piece of the rear engines broken off from the cockpit a few yards behind it, also smoking but without the billowing black clouds. The gouge went for probably a whole kilometer behind the ship, but had somehow missed the fence just beyond it. Or maybe everything on this ranch was farther apart than it looked.

I remembered my escape from Shent, when the ship had been shiny and in perfect working order. I remembered the clone troopers still pointing their blasters at the cockpit glass as I had begun to pilot the ship away. I felt like I was going to throw up, either from the smell or the memory or the medication I had taken.

“It’s a mess,” said Jean.

“What are you going to do with it?” I asked George.

“Well, when it’s stopped burning, the metal pieces will be cool enough to move,” he said. “That will probably take a day or two. But when that happens, I’m going to put it in storage in a shed up by the house. We’ll keep it under lock and key. Got it?” I nodded to him. “Yeah. You said there was more of this on the ship?”

“Twin jet engines, and a tail,” I said. “But they broke off in the atmosphere. The ship was already damaged. And I’d never have the know-how to repair it. And if your planet doesn’t have similar spaceships, well, I guess I’m stuck here.” I looked up at him. “I’m sorry about the damage, sir.” 

George shrugged. “Cows won’t care as long as the grass grows back.”

I would never be able to go back. Never see my master or the other Jedi or the clones again. But I couldn’t go back if I wanted to: the clones had killed my master, they had almost killed me. My eyes felt wet. I blinked.

What had happened? Why had they turned on us?

R17-M3...the droid could never have survived that. If I’d landed the ship in one piece, maybe, but did this culture have the technology to maintain a droid? I didn’t think so.   
I was alone. I was cut off from everything I knew.

“Did you have any family?” Jean asked me, startling me from my thoughts.

“No,” I replied. I looked back at the wreck. “I was abandoned at a young age. I was...raised to be a traveling...peacekeeper. A warrior. My master got killed and he told me to escape.” Isolated planet or not, I didn’t want to mention that I was a Jedi. The word ‘Jedi’ didn’t need to reach the wrong ears.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you by asking that,” said Jean.

“It’s fine,” I said.

“Do you want to go back to the house now?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I nodded.

George and Jean both looked at me like they wanted to help me, but they politely kept their distance. 

Jean and I returned to the cab and drove back up to the house. I tried to watch the landscape as we passed by, but I couldn’t keep out the thoughts anymore of what had happened--I didn’t know what to call it.

When we returned to the house, Mag was in the yard, sniffing around, but she ran up to greet us when we arrived. Jean parked her cab outside the garage, beside her car. Mag sniffed us both as we walked into the garage, but I brushed the animal aside. 

I didn’t understand. Why had the clones turned on us? We had never done anything to them. Why did they think we had betrayed the Republic?

I went to the guest room. I sat on the bed and I cried. I searched for answers through the Force, but nothing came except my own self-blame and frustration. Why did I just run and leave Phish to give his life protecting me? Why couldn’t have I done something to help? Why wasn’t I dead beside him? Why was I still alive, when there were so many times during my journey through space when I should have died? 

I wiped my tears and snot on the bedsheets. When I was finished crying, I sat alone with my thoughts, trying to see if they could connect somehow. Was there something I had missed? Something about the clones earlier in the day? During the years we had fought together? 

Was it something one of the other Jedi had done? For some reason, I was thinking of Anakin Skywalker. Just randomly. But there was no reason to believe he would do something that would have led to this. Was it Yoda? Ki-adi-mundi? Mace Windu? Beyond those random guesses, I could not begin to think what had happened. It had to be some kind of a mistake, or a trick of some kind.

Thinking of the other Jedi made me feel afraid. Unless someone had followed me, I would never see any of them again. I was safe from my enemies, but to those I counted friends I was lost. Nish and I may have been the only people that this betrayal had happened to, and the other Jedi might never know, because I had gotten lost while trying to escape.

Unless they were all dead, too.

I remembered my lightsaber being blown up. If only I had held onto it I would still have it...but what good would it do me, trapped on possibly the wrong side of the galaxy, maybe the entire universe? But I still held onto the thought of if only: if only I had reached for it with the Force, then maybe I could have saved it.

The Force. That was when I realized that something felt different here about the Force. It seemed incomplete. Something about being on this planet seemed a little off. Maybe it was a difference in gravity. I still had my powers, right?

I rose to my feet. I had taken off my shoes and discarded them on the floor. I held out my arm and willed one of the shoes to float up to my hand. 

Nothing happened.

It couldn’t be. I tried again. I felt the Force, but it wasn’t doing what I needed it to. The Force was just there. I couldn’t use it. 

“No...no...no, not this.”

I remembered what Master Nish had said to me a year or so ago. That using the Force wasn’t just about your physical abilities but included the capacity to receive knowledge. Of course I had ignored him. Was this some kind of a punishment? 

I didn’t want to know. What good was knowledge going to do me if I couldn’t defend myself with the Force? I was powerless.

I broke down crying again. And I shut out whatever feelings the mental side of the Force was trying to give me, whatever correction to my ridiculous, histrionic notions.

The Force had abandoned me. I was truly alone.

I was on the floor crying for about ten minutes. I heard Jean knocking on the door to check on me, but I didn’t answer. I almost would have welcomed an interruption if it were Master Nish walking into the room and telling me to snap out of it. The fact that he would never do that for me again almost hurt worse.

What if the Force itself had betrayed the Jedi? Or worse, betrayed me?

 

After I’d cried myself out with exhaustion, I slept for a few more hours. I woke up in the early evening. Jean was happy to fix me something to eat, this time just grated cheese and some mashed beans on a flat bread called a tortilla. She helped me to take off my bandages and I took a shower. The shower helped clear my head, though it did nothing for the burns. No, the Force had not abandoned me completely, it was just limited on this planet. No more dramatic tricks or showing off aerial skills. That still felt like a punch in the gut to think about. 

Jean looked at me while she was helping me put on new bandages like she wanted to ask me what was wrong. What would she understand? I thought to myself. I went to bed wondering if I could ignore whatever was left of my Force powers for the rest of my life and see if it could stay buried.

Yes, Jedi are teenagers too. 

The next day I slept in and had a late breakfast/early lunch--Jean jokingly called it “brunch.” A special breakfast tortilla with eggs, beans, cheese, and some cooked vegetables. I ate two of them.

The big breakfast was needed. As soon as I had eaten, Jean and I went outside to help George clean out one of the sheds beside the house--that was where we were going to store the remains of my starship. At least whatever we could fit. We moved the contents of the shed over to the barn. 

I was still in a considerable amount of pain from my burns, and I could move only stiffly and slowly like a protocol droid. But I was determined to help. Even if I couldn’t move things around with the Force.

The Bridgers had some of their other pets living at the barn, elegant creatures with long faces and flowing manes and tails. Jean said they were called horses. George said after we had finished for the day that he would show me how to ride them. I wasn’t actually interested, but I didn’t say anything in protest. I had decided I wanted to humor him. 

Jean and I put on long-sleeved work shirts and we drove down to the south pasture with George in the truck. The wreck had stopped smoking. The three of us put on heavy gloves and began to move the starfighter remains into the pickup. George smashed up the bigger pieces with a hammer, and having been scorched thoroughly the metal crumbled easily. We took the broken parts one bit at a time and placed them in the back of the pickup, some more carefully than others. We loaded it enough to cover the bed of the pickup and then some, and then we drove it back to the house and moved those pieces into the shed. 

We did this for about three hours, working through the heat of the day. Jean had brought six bottles of water for us to drink, and I gulped down three before we were finished. I didn’t talk to the other two much while we worked. Sometimes they would ask me if there were pieces I recognized, but most of the ship was either from the hull or charred beyond recognition. 

I did find a few pieces from inside the astromech socket that looked like they belonged to R17-M3: some exterior panels, parts of a leg, a wheel. I spent a quarter of an hour digging through that segment of the ship, just to see what I could find. There wasn’t much else. The wires were all fused and melted together or else blown up. I guessed his head had been blown off. I had to go sit in the cab for a few minutes when I realized that. 

We only finished part of the cleanup before Jean and George were too exhausted to do more. We returned to the house, resolved to visit the wreck again tomorrow. They let me shower and take a few minutes to rest. Jean changed my bandages again. 

I took a nap until later in the afternoon. When I was awake, George was waiting in the living room, reading from a folded paper. 

“Would you like to go see the horses now?” he asked me.

I shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind.” I got my shoes back on, and Jean loaned me a loose woven shirt that had buttons on the front. George went out to the barn wearing his hat with the big brim and the strange folds in the center.

The barn was a large, unfurnished structure of corrugated metal and a dirt floor. There were shelves of equipment on the walls, now crowded with items we had brought over from the shed. Part of it was divided into stalls for the animals. The open side of the barn led out to a little corral where the horses were pacing and eating grass. George took a rope from one of the shelves and went into the corral. Walking carefully, he approached one of the horses and tied the rope to a bridle about its face, and then he led the horse into the barn. And he had the horse stop in front of me.

“This is Chimera,” he said. “She’s the nicest of our three horses, so if you’re just learning to ride she’s a good one to have. Don’t be shy. She won’t hurt you as long as you’re gentle on her.” Chimera had a solid light-brown coat, and her mane and tail were golden.

I walked up slowly to the horse. She tossed her head slightly and watched me with her big, dark eyes.

I had never had much opportunity as a Padawan Learner to use the Force to connect with animals. I held out my hand to the horse slowly. I tapped into the Force and then used it to connect to the horse’s mind. The horse didn’t trust me, but she was not defensive about my approach.

“Chimera, this is Emily,” George said to the horse. “She’s going to be staying with us now.” The words didn’t have any meaning to the horse--I was just a strange human to her.

“Can I pet her face?” I asked.

“Yes, go ahead. Be really slow.” I touched the horse’s chin and patted it. The coat was dusty but smooth. “Atta girl, Emily.” I stood close to the horse and stroked her neck. Chimera was evaluating me, seeing if I was a threat or not. She sniffed me softly with her big nostrils. She was warm. 

“So what do you do with horses?” I asked.

“We ride them. Jean and I do most of the work on the ranch these days with the truck, but occasionally I like to take them out when I go to fix the fences. Jean and I go out for trail rides, here on the ranch and nearby, sometimes at the national parks or the state park. Jean does the barrel races at the rodeo with them. They’re a lot of work, but they’re good to work with. I’m going to have you ride Chimera, but first, I’m going to show you how to saddle up a horse properly.” George took Chimera by the lead and walked her over to one corner of the barn where there were some tools on the wall. “Lesson One: whatever you do, don’t stand directly behind a horse,” George warned me.

“Yes, sir,” I said. 

George tied Chimera next to the wall. Then he took a large brush sitting on the shelf and showed me how to run it over her coat and dust her off. “Do you wanna brush for a minute?”

“Sure,” I said. He handed me the brush and advised me to go easy. Chimera twitched her body as I brushed her torso and neck, but stayed in place. 

“What do I do with the mane?” I asked.

“We keep a comb for that. Go around her front and do the other side.” I did as instructed. I kept the brush strokes as even as possible. I had the impression that Chimera trusted me since she trusted George.

“There, that’s it,” said George. “Can I leave you alone with her for a moment?”

“Sure,” I said. 

“I’m just going over to the corral to look at the other two. I’ll be right back.” George turned and left.

I sent Chimera telepathic reassurance that I meant her no harm. Chimera took my word for it. She wondered why I was different than the other humans, why I could speak to her mind. I wasn’t sure how to get a horse to understand. So I told her I had run away from somewhere. 

When George came back, I had gone around to Chimera’s side and was brushing her flanks. He grabbed another brush and did her other side. And when she was brushed out, he got her ready for me to ride. He told me to watch carefully, and he started to put riding gear on Chimera’s back. First a blanket. Then a saddle. The saddle took him several minutes to fit and adjust. Chimera didn’t mind, just twitched her tail a little. This was pretty routine. Then he put a leather bridle on her face with a metal bit for the mouth. Taking the reins, he began to lead her out and told me to follow him. We went out the other side of the barn from the attached corral. There was a small ring-shaped enclosure outside with a narrow gate. George admitted me and followed with himself and the horse. 

“Now, watch me.” He mounted the saddle and began to ride slowly around the enclosure. He rode for about two minutes and I watched him. “You want to give it a try?”

“Is it harder than it looks?”

He smiled, stopped the horse and slid off. Slowly, I walked up to the saddle. The horse’s back was as high as my head. I wasn’t sure my leg would make it over.

“You want a boost up?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Just put your right leg into the stirrup in front of you, and I’ll help the rest of you over.”

It was a bit of a stretch to get my foot into the stirrup. I clawed the saddle for something to grip.

“Grab the horn--that’s the knob thing.” I took hold of the horn. “Now, lift up.”

I pulled myself up. George guided my foot over the top of the saddle. I nearly pulled off the saddle with the weight of my foot in the stirrup. But I lifted up and I landed comfortably in the seat. My heart raced when I saw how high up I was. 

“Can you reach the stirrups comfortably?”

“Uh--” I leaned over the sides. My left foot hadn’t reached the stirrup yet and fished for it. My right foot was nearly slipping out.

“I think I’ll take them up a little,” said George. “Go ahead and pull your right foot out.” I did as instructed, and I tried to shake myself and the saddle under me straight, and he fixed the stirrups. I looked down at the saddle, feeling useless. When he said I could, I tucked my feet into the stirrups again.

“Much better.”

“All right. Now, hold the reins right here. Don’t ever pull them too tight or too loose,” he said, fixing my fingers around the reins to the right tautness. “If you want to steer, pull the direction you want to go, left,” he pulled left, “right,” he pulled right. “To stop, pull back on the reins and say, ‘Ho.’ To start or to increase speed, kick your feet gently onto the side. That’s the basics. You want me to lead you for a little while?”

“Sure,” I nodded. He took the reins closer to the bit. 

“Hold your reins loose. Go ahead and start.”

I kicked in my knees. Chimera began to move forward, slowly, and George lead her around the corral. The horse gently rocked up and down beneath me. He led me on the horse for a short while before he asked if I was ready to try on my own. I didn’t really care either way, as long as the horse didn’t suddenly run off. He let go of the reins and went back to the fence to watch. 

I got the hang of it pretty quickly. George would call out reminders to me occasionally. The sun began to sink behind the cliffs off to the west. The breeze was very faint, and I could hear birds and insects calling in the distance. I felt relaxed and at ease for the first time in who knew how long, maybe since before departing for Shent with Master Nish...I quickly turned my thoughts away. I didn’t want to start mourning again here. 

George finally stopped me, and we led Chimera back to the barn. As sorry as I was to leave the saddle, at the same time I was a little stiff from having sat in one position for a little while. I helped George unsaddle Chimera and we brushed her again. He then took two combs from the shelf and, giving me one, showed me how to comb her mane and tail hair. Then he moved her into one of the stalls in the barn, and I helped him put feed in her trough. 

Then George went into the corral and brought in a second horse, named Venus. Venus had a coat of dark brown with a bright white patch on her forehead. Her mane and tail were almost black. George brought her in to brush her clean, and I helped him. I tried to connect to Venus with the Force. Venus, however, was not as friendly as Chimera, and she startled and backed away from us.

“Whoa, hey, Venus, you all right?” George asked, frightened.

“It’s me,” I said hastily. “She doesn’t like me. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. You just keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t let her scare you.”

I continued to brush Venus once she had calmed down, but I did not touch her mind with the Force again. George and I combed and brushed her out, and then put her in a stall and fed her as well. 

Then it was time for the third horse to come in. Crystal was all golden, coat and mane. She was less docile than Chimera but also less skittish than Venus. I decided to not use the Force with her, to minimize the risk of hurting George or myself. Crystal was overall not too perturbed by the appearance of a strange human. Before too long we had Crystal in her stall for the night, and we returned to the house.

“So do you like that, kid?” George asked me.

“Like what?”

“Working with horses?”

“Yeah. Yeah I do. It was...relaxing, actually,” I said. “It even helped me to take my mind off my troubles for a bit. Thanks.”

“And what about riding, did you like that?”

“It’ll take some getting used to,” I admitted.

“Yeah, it does. But once you get the hang of it, you’ll enjoy it. These horses, like I said, they’re a lot of work, but hard work is good for you.”

“You sound like...you sound like my teacher,” I said to George. Really, though, George Bridger had very little in common with Master Nish. George was much more likeable. 

“Would you like to do this again tomorrow?” he asked me.

“Maybe. We’ll see how I’m feeling.”

“If you like responsibility, kid, you’ll like these horses. But I doubt you really want as big a job as taking care of three horses every single day.”

“No. I could use something to do,” I said. It would be harder for anyone trying to find a runaway Jedi to catch her doing menial work with livestock on a planet nobody had heard of. And who said hiding was all that I had to do? It would be a new life for me.

I went back to the house. Jean had prepared a meat and pasta casserole for dinner. After eating I helped her to clean the dishes: the Bridgers didn’t have a dishwasher, in order to save on scarce water. I asked Jean why she didn’t have a droid to help her with food preparation or cleanup: she said that robot technology and artificial intelligence wasn’t that advanced on this planet, either. It had already occurred to me that they didn’t have a moisture vaporator, but I didn’t say anything. 

Life on this isolated planet was going to be different. The things I was seeing and learning here gave me a lot to think about, when Jean redid my burn bandages for the night and I went to bed. Back in my home galaxy, it was expected I would fully devote my life to the Jedi path. There were plenty of Jedi who would go live on their own and devote their lives to strict meditation and communion with the Force. I wasn’t interested in that kind of an exile. Especially if the Jedi were now, as the clones claimed, enemies of the Republic. But given the option to do something different with my life, I would take it.

I tried to not think of the reason my life had changed so dramatically. But the sleepier I got, the more my thoughts drifted that direction.

 

The next day, a late spring rainstorm hit the ranch. I was inside all day long. I tried to occupy myself watching Jean work on her sewing machine or crochet, but I got bored easily. George went out to take care of the cows and horses and came back inside covered with mud and muck. When he had cleaned up and settled down, he spent some of the time working on a small computer in Jean’s work room, and the rest of the afternoon napping. The dog Mag paced back and forth across the house. Sometimes she would follow me when I paced. She didn’t try to jump on me as she had before, but kept her distance. 

I eventually went back to my room to nap as well. But instead of sleeping I was wide awake lying on my bed, remembering what had happened on Shent. I reflected on the last two and a half years--or was it three now?--fighting in the war. I reflected on the years before then, my learning the Jedi path as a youngling, my training as Nish’s Padawan. I had no way of knowing what had happened to the other Jedi. I cried off and on. Jean would knock on the door and ask me if I was all right. She would bring me tissues and glasses of water. I mostly wanted to be alone. 

That evening, when I was feeling low, Mag came into my room. Jean was on the computer and I guess she didn’t see her; George and Jean did not want their dog in my room. She stayed at my doorway and whimpered. 

“Go away, Mag,” I said to her. “You’re not supposed to be in here.”

She gave a high-pitched whine and looked at me sideways. 

“I said go away.” I thought maybe Jean would hear me, but she didn’t. Then I had a thought from the Force: what is the dog’s perspective?

I reached the dog’s mind with my own. The dog could tell that I was sad. She was sorry for me. She knew I had suffered something. 

I sighed, relenting. “All right, mutt. You can come in.”

Mag crossed the floor and walked right up to my bed, her tail wagging. She wanted to jump onto it and lick me.

“No, don’t climb on my bed,” I said to her. “You stay. Stay on the floor.” Mag sat down in front of the bed. “That’s it, good girl.” I patted the top of Mag’s head. “Good girl, that’s all I needed right now, thank you.” When I was done petting her, Mag turned and left. 

 

The next day, the sky was clear again, but the ground was muddy. When George and I went out to the crash site to keep gathering up my spaceship, Jean gave me an elastic to tie my hair back with. I had half a mind to keep my Padawan braid out, but then I realized that the braid marked me as a Jedi. So I pulled it back with the rest of my hair. 

George and I finished collecting the last remains of the N-1 fighter. It was a tight fit, but all of the scraps fit in the shed. I set aside some of the pieces I had found of R17-M3 and put them on their own shelf.

In the late afternoon George took me to the barn again. This time I rode Crystal around the round pen, and we made the circle fifty times.

“This isn’t the only place you ride your horses, is it?” I asked him.

“No,” George laughed. “But I think we should get the horses used to you, first.”

I tried to connect gently with Crystal’s mind. She was uncertain, but she got used to hearing my thoughts directly. Venus was a little more relaxed around me when I brushed her down later, but I didn’t attempt to touch her with the Force yet.

That first week, I was in pain from the burns I had received in the crash and they healed slowly. During the day I rested, and a lot of that was staying in my room and crying. Mag would wander in sometimes. Finally after the third or fourth time she’d wandered in I let her on the bed. She laid down and let me cuddle up with her. 

I did tell Jean, in very vague terms, about what had happened to me. That I had been a commander in a space war with my master, and the soldiers we had fought with had suddenly turned on us. 

George took me out to the barn in the evenings. On the third night he let me ride Venus, and I took turns with the three horses.He did let me ride Chimera once around the house and the main buildings of the ranch. 

When the bandages came off my burns, I had some discolored scars on my legs, but it wasn’t anything that wearing long pants wouldn’t hide. Jean and George took me on a short trail ride through one of the pastures. I got to ride Crystal. 

A little over a week after I had come to the ranch, I was feeling well enough to help Jean and George with more of the ranch work. George introduced me to the cows--they were mostly indifferent to having their minds read. The bull they kept was actually sort of friendly and tried to sniff me with his big, wet nose. 

George showed me how to fix fences, drive the truck through the fields, muck out horse stalls and cattle pens, and do little things around the ranch. Jean took me back to Moab to buy me more clothes. I picked out some button-up shirts at the thrift store like Jean’s. Jean also took me to a ranch outfitters store to get me some boots and a hat like George’s--a cowboy hat, it was called. Jean showed me how to keep house, drive the golf cart, and take care of Mag. 

Mag and I were becoming close companions. She often slept with me at night. The nights were the worst. After busy days I could fall asleep quickly, but I would wake up in the middle of the night and then toss and turn and then cry about everything that had happened. Or sometimes I would just stay asleep and I would yell during the nightmares. Some nights I would get no sleep at all and I would be tired during the day. But Jean always left my door open a bit, and Mag would push it open with her nose or her paws and come over to my bed. She’d lick my hand or my face and then climb onto the covers to sleep next to me. It felt better to have something big and warm to sleep with. 

Jean and George were concerned, but they let me keep my distance. I didn’t know how to really say what I was going through, or how I was feeling. 

I threw myself into taking care of the horses. After a week I had attempted making a Force-connection again with Venus, and I was slowly able to gain her trust. 

I would spend time alone with the horses, when I gained more confidence with them. I was able to communicate with them that I was hurt, mentally and spiritually. Spending time with them, being able to touch them and to speak to them, sometimes verbally when I was alone, soothed me. 

George noticed that I had a way with the horses: I told him that it was a “gift” I had been born with, to use my mind to feel things. He didn’t pry. 

 

A month passed in this manner. One night, after we’d finished up at the barn, we had a few extra minutes before dinner, so George took me to watch the sunset from the corral fence. He told me about his youngest brother, John Bridger, who had wasted his life in drug and alcohol abuse. He told me about how he had carried the grief of his brother’s loss with him for so many years. 

“There’s no way to ever really get over that kind of loss,” said George. “But you learn...you learn to pick up enough of the pieces of your life to carry on.”

“The way I was taught,” I said, “dwelling on your loss or grief is bad for you. If you’re attached to it, it can lead to anger and hatred and evil. Or it can make you too depressed to do anything with your life.” I didn’t add that I was raised to believe that not caring about other people in the first place was the ideal.

“That’s true,” said George. “But you always have a choice to do something different with your grief, to learn from it, and to be stronger for it.”

That was when George told me that he and Jean wanted to legally adopt me. They would claim that I was a long-lost daughter of John Bridger. Over dinner, I told them that I accepted their offer. Jean said that they would buy a homeschooling program for their computer so that I could learn to read and write in their language. They would also start integrating me with Earthling society, and foster my independence by enrolling me in a county driving school in Moab that met once a week. 

After dinner I went to the bathroom. I’d been keeping my padawan braid tied back with the rest of my hair, but it wasn’t doing me any good, and if I was going in public I couldn’t have anything that labeled me as a Jedi. Hanging loose, the Padawan braid came to my bust. I cut it even with the rest of my hair, to my shoulder. 

Jean wasn’t surprised that I’d gotten rid of the braid. She trimmed the rest of my hair herself, but she left the bangs alone: I was going to grow them out for once. As for the padawan braid, Jean found some jewelry-making supplies with her other craft odds and ends in her workroom. She made it into a bracelet that I wear to this day. 

Late summer brought thunderstorms to the plateau. I stayed inside the house on rainy days. I spent those rainy afternoons in my room, crying through the worst of my grief. I got used to letting Jean and George hug me, and some of those afternoons Jean would just come into my room and hold me.

Jean and George took me on rides on the trails in and around their ranch. They also took me out to see the local sights as much as possible. The horses frequently came with us. We went trail riding at both of the nearby national parks, Arches and Canyonlands, and some of the state parks including Dead Horse Point. 

Summertime was also Rodeo season. George worked the rodeos in small towns and big towns all across the desert region where they lived. Jean did barrel-racing. They had three barrels set up in one of the fenced lots on their property, and she showed me how it was done. I would go with them to the rodeos, and I watched Jean compete with Crystal in Manti, Moab, and Saint George. At the rodeos I would help her and George with whichever horse they had brought along. In my time alone in public, I stayed aloof from the other Earthlings, and since Mag came with us on most of the rodeo trips I often stayed with her. I would watch the other Earthlings, but I wasn’t ready to socialize with them yet. George and Jean introduced me to a few of their friends. The highlight of the rodeo weekends for me, however, was sightseeing the nearby national parks: the Grand Canyon when we went to Page, and Bryce Canyon and Zion when we went to Saint George. Those weekend trips were when we really bonded.

I didn’t formally start the homeschool program until it was almost fall, but I could read the English language passably in time for entering the drivers’ ed course. My time was spent between learning to drive, working on the ranch, riding the horses, doing homeschool studies, and going to rodeos. During the weekly driving classes in Moab I first interacted with people my own age, most of them enrolled in the public school or homeschooled like me. I didn’t tell them much about myself, except that I was from Colorado and I’d had a “rough life”--the cover story was that I had lived in an abusive foster home. But in spite of the backstory, people were surprised at how intelligent I was. I guess I wasn’t smart enough to dumb myself down. I took the drivers’ test in December and passed. 

That Christmas we went to see Jean’s sister in Salt Lake City for a few days. That was my first real exposure to the Mormons. Jean and George were not Mormon, and neither were any of their family--herding cattle and riding in rodeos was their religion. But they took me to see the ‘tourist stuff’ in Downtown Salt Lake, including Temple Square and the holiday lights. I thought it was nice just to see what a city looked like on this planet, with its busy streets and crowded suburbs.

Education in my home galaxy is different. Our knowledge of the sciences is much more advanced, so what I learned in math and science in homeschool was review of the very basic principles--in fact I’d forgotten some of the details. But I completed the coursework in less than the two and a half years that I lived on the ranch. I did a lot of it at home on the computer when I wasn’t helping George and Jean with the cows and the horses and the ranch. 

In the spring, I started practicing barrel-racing. When the late-summer rodeo circuit started again, I competed in the local rodeos with Chimera as my steed. So yes, I was a rodeo cowgirl. I still am, when I’m not in school. That summer I still did trail-riding and horsebacking trips with Jean and George. Jean’s relatives from Salt Lake came to visit, as did George’s sister from California and her family (who didn’t quite buy the story about me being John Bridger’s long-lost daughter, but she didn’t say anything). Apart from family visits, homeschooling, and ranch life, barrel-racing came to take up most of my time. I did make friends with a few of the other barrel-racers that I met, girls who lived around the Southwest and came around for events, and the boys our age who did the other rodeo events. I got Facebook to keep in touch with them.

I didn’t score well in my first few competitions. Then when I rode in the Kanab Rodeo, I got third place and a five hundred dollar prize. That was when I had to seriously ask myself if being a cowgirl was all I wanted with my new life. What was I going to spend the money on? And what was I being homeschooled for?

In my homeschool studies, I had learned more about the places and people on this planet I was now officially stuck on forever. I had traveled quite a bit around the American West, but I knew that there were other places outside it. It was just a small corner of the planet. Most worlds I had visited as a Jedi, I only ever saw one small region, and we never stayed for very long. 

It wasn’t that I didn’t like being a cowgirl, but I wanted to see if I could do other things with my life, too. Going to college seemed the way to find all those opportunities. Most of the Earthlings my age that I had met were setting out for college with the intention of training for higher careers. If I found a different profession, all the better. It’d be another way to lose myself in the crowd. 

Jean and George understood how I felt and gave me their full support. They couldn’t do much to help me pay for college, however. So I started barrel-racing for prize money and scholarships to put towards school. I guess I could have had my choice of schools to apply to in-state (well, maybe not BYU), but going to Utah Valley University seemed the easiest and most affordable option. 

So two years and some odd months after arriving on this planet, Jean and George drove me up to Orem, Utah. Jean gave me her car and bought me groceries, but beyond that I was on my own. They drove back in the truck. Mag whined and howled when they left me behind. All three of us humans were practically crying--because I was the child that Jean and George had never been able to have themselves. And for the first time in my life, I had a family.

PART II

So far, college has been a lot of fun. The academics are challenging, for sure. Having professors and lectures and coursework can be tough, but it stretches the mind. I balance that out with a social life, hanging out with friends my age that I’ve met in classes, on campus, or in my apartment building, reading books, watching movies and playing games and getting better acquainted with the culture of this planet. I’m making the most of it. I love trying new things whenever I get the opportunity.

When I came up to UVU, I moved into an apartment complex on the south side of the campus, right up the hill from Walmart. I have moved apartments once but I’m still at the same place. Four person, two bed, two bath. The place doesn’t have a pool but I have plenty of friends who live in places that do (or friends who know people with pool access). And I don’t mind showing off the scars on my arms and legs.

My first three roommates were Sasha, Vanessa, and Kelsey. Sasha and Kelsey are both Mormons. That first year Sasha and Kelsey invited me to their church and church events every chance they got. I did go to several of them. Mormons are all about missionary work and getting more people to join their church. I was introduced to Sasha and Kelsey’s church friends but I was able to stay under the missionary radar. I went to a real “college party” once with the drinking and loud music and didn’t find it to my taste. I much preferred Sasha and Kelsey’s Mormon parties: soda, chips, games, and socializing--and less vomiting. 

When I got tired of squeaky-clean Mormon stuff, I could always complain to Vanessa. Vanessa was going to cosmetology school as well as taking a night class at UVU during my first semester. She wasn’t home very much, since she was usually out with her boyfriend. But when she was home, we had quality time together.

Kelsey Hansen is from Alpine, Utah, on the north side of Utah Valley. I expected when I met her that I would have nothing in common with her--an active Mormon, popular, pretty, plays the piano and cello, going into nursing, planning to serve a mission and, after that, find a cute boy to marry. 

It was Kelsey who introduced me to Broadway musicals. She would listen to cast recordings while she was in the shower or doing her hair and makeup, and I enjoyed listening to it--and listening to her sing along.

The more time I spent with Kelsey that first month at school, the easier it was for me to talk to her, even if it was just about the ranch or the rodeo. Kelsey loves to hike, and she’s been hiking in several of the national and state parks that I’ve visited. That first month I was in Orem, I was homesick for the ranch, but talking to Kelsey about the horses whenever she asked was an outlet for that. I think I became friends with Kelsey because she wanted to hear about that side of me. I didn’t get any hints from the Force about her at first--I just wanted to be her friend.

I didn’t think very highly of what was left of my Force powers. Being able to just sense or know things without seeing them wasn’t a big deal--it was just a reminder of what I had lost. There had been instances when I had used it and some shared information had made a difference, and of course working with the horses and Mag it had come in handy. But at college, out in the real world, I felt more pressure to hide myself, to not do anything different or to stand out. George and Jean had meant well giving me advice to not reveal who I was, but it meant that I had to treat other people like they were out to get me. Don’t get caught, they said to me. Don’t get caught. So I had to put aside that part of my identity. 

What was worse was that burden of grief I was still carrying around. Two years of working on the ranch and then barrel racing had helped me to work through some of it. But George was right when he said that you carried the loss with you for the rest of your life. I missed Master Nish. The way that he had died and I had been driven out of my home galaxy had hurt a lot--I still have nightmares to this day. I missed the clone troopers we had served with, I hated not knowing why they had turned on us. Not seeing the horses every day made me feel it more keenly. I hadn’t really talked much to George and Jean about where I was from or what I had gone through, but they were different. I wanted someone who was my age that I could talk to and open up to. But who could I approach without sounding crazy? Who could I trust to not turn me in? Sometimes I wondered if it was Kelsey--she was the first friend I had made. We liked to talk together, but about something this personal and secret? Would it work?

George and Jean Bridger do not have a television. Even if they did, I wonder if I would have found out sooner. But I didn’t see any movies or TV shows until I came to college.  
I came home from school one afternoon in late September. It was a Friday night. I didn’t have a ton of homework to do, except some reading for my English class. I didn’t make plans in advance a lot of the time--I was finding that plans tended to make themselves. So I wasn’t surprised when Kelsey came home around five-thirty with a party invitation.

“They’re having a Star Wars party at Roxanne’s apartment,” she said.

“A What Party?” I asked. I was sitting at the kitchen table, reading.

“Star Wars!” she said. “You’ve never seen Star Wars?”

“I’m culturally deprived, remember?”

“Aaagh! You’re missing out!” Kelsey threw up her hands. “You have to come--and there’s going to be food.”

“Food? Okay, I’m there. When is it?”

“It doesn’t officially start until six, but people are heading over there now.”

“Then let’s go,” I said. I got out of the kitchen chair and followed Kelsey over to the building where the party was at.

The hosts had put up green streamers around the apartment inside and out, and there were posters and little colored pictures taped to the walls and windows. Right as I was walking up the stairs to the apartment, I saw something written on the window in bright markers.

“May the Force be With You--what?” I said to myself quietly. I stopped.

Kelsey looked back at me. “You okay?”

“Nothing, I’m fine.”

The inside of the apartment was festive, but I couldn’t tell what the occasion was. Dramatic orchestral music was playing from the stereo. Food was sitting on the kitchen counter and table. The hosts had put up green streamers around the apartment inside and out, and there were posters and little colored pictures taped to the walls and windows. There were people in the kitchen and living room, nearly all of them from the apartment complex. 

I had a closer look at the pictures taped to the wall. They were cut out from printed coloring pages. There were an attractive man and woman that looked like they were swinging on a rope together, both of them dressed in white, one of them had her hair done in buns on both sides of her head. There was another, a woman in an elaborate gown and headdress. I thought I recognized the makeup, but for a minute I couldn’t place it. And then a third picture on the kitchen wall had a short figure with a green head, pointed ears and wearing a billowing robe--”Yoda?” I breathed. 

I turned my attention to the food. Each of the food items had labels: “Princess Leia’s Buns” marked a plate of Little Debbie Honey Buns torn out of their packaging. There were nutty cookies labeled “wookie cookies;” and a tray of candied popcorn named “Remnants of the Death Star”--what was that? 

There were several cups of milk set out that had had blue food dye added to them. “Aunt Beru’s Blue Milk,” read the label. Who was Aunt Beru and what was Blue Milk supposed to be?

I had a sip of the Blue Milk. The taste was terrible--I guess it was the food coloring. I choked on that for a moment. 

“Are you okay?” Kelsey asked me.

“I’m fine,” I said, gasping. “Must’ve gone down the windpipe.” I walked over to the sink and dumped the rest of the glass. 

“Were you getting Force-choked over there?” someone in the room asked. I didn’t know how to respond to that.

The hostess, Roxanne, was mixing green sherbert with soda in a pitcher.

“What’s that you’re making?” I asked her.

“Yoda Soda,” she replied with a laugh. She finished mixing and poured me a glass. That was much tastier than the Blue Milk. 

There were rice-crispy treats on the table, too, but dyed bright green and shaped to look like a head with two pointy ears. Kelsey held one up and said it was so cute. I’d eaten regular rice crispies before, but why would I want one shaped like the head of the grand master of the Jedi Order?

One of the guys from the apartment complex entered the room wearing some kind of a costume which met with the approval of his peers. The costume was really just a dark brown bathrobe. But he also had a toy that was some kind of a hilt with a green telescoping blade--almost like…

“Nice lightsaber,” said one of the girls in the kitchen.

I walked up to the guy. “May I see it?” I asked. He let me hold the “lightsaber.” It was like an actual lightsaber hilt, except a little bit bigger. I tried the blade, then gave it back to its owner.

There were about fifteen people crowded in the kitchen and living room by six thirty, eating food and talking loudly. Someone suggested that they turn on a movie. Roxanne went into the living room, turned on the TV, and put a disk in the DVD player. 

I missed the first part of the movie because I was still in the kitchen, socializing with Kelsey and our other friends from the neighborhood, somehow we got into a long conversation comparing our different biology professors. I heard the noise of the movie and decided to poke my head into the living room to see what was happening. And on the TV screen I saw a boy in a white shirt talking to:

A protocol droid with golden plating and a little blue astromech. 

It can’t be.

And then the astromech played a hologram.

No. No way.

I went to sit down in the living room, squeezed between two of the other party guests. Then someone sitting across the room from me asked me how I was doing. We talked for a minute, but then I went back to watching. Everyone in the living room was talking, and plus there was a lot of noise from the people in the kitchen. I couldn’t hear well, even with the tv volume turned up. So I couldn’t keep track exactly of what was happening in the movie. All I could catch was that the boy’s name was Luke. He and the droids went looking for a man named Ben Kenobi--but then when they found him I thought I heard the old man say he was “Obi-wan Kenobi.”

What? That can’t be Obi-wan Kenobi. He’s way too old.

I listened carefully during the scene when Luke was at Kenobi’s house: was it just me or was he talking about the Jedi? And there was something about Luke’s father.

“A young Jedi named Darth Vader, who was a pupil of mine before he turned to evil, helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi. Darth Vader betrayed and murdered your father. Vader was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force.”

“The Force?”

“The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It is an energy field created by all living things, and it binds the galaxy together.”

I couldn’t just ask Roxanne to slow down and rewind the movie, not with everyone else watching it. And my peers were making loud discussion in the background about how bad of a liar Obi-wan was, one of them was talking about “In the prequels” this and “originally for Empire they did” that. Then of course there was this big gray space station called the Death Star, and this organization called the Empire. I figured out quickly that Darth Vader was the guy in the ugly mask--and he used the Force to choke someone! On Camera! Or at least that was what the film was depicting. What was going on?

I thought I recognized some of the alien species in the cantina scene--and true to form, the droids were told to stay outside. My eyes almost melted when I saw the wookie--I’d never had the chance to meet a wookie during my padawan days, but I’d heard how nice they were. And Luke and his friends were going to Alderaan--Alderaan! My heart leaped.   
I asked someone about the guys in white armor. He explained that they were called “stormtroopers” and they worked for the Empire. They looked eerily different from the clones, but so similar still. 

The girl with the buns from the picture on the wall was in this movie, she was being held captive on the Death Star. The Death Star was taken to Alderaan. And then The Death Star blew up Alderaan. 

No. It can’t be. This is just a movie.

There was a long sequence after that with Luke and Han Solo and the wookie and the droids on the Death Star. I got up for more snacks during that. But I was confused: what was this movie? Who were the people in it? There were some things about it that could have been from my home galaxy, but it looked different, too. 

I watched Obi-wan Kenobi fight with Darth Vader. After that I told Roxanne I needed to borrow this movie so I could watch it on my own, without interruptions. Roxanne laughed and agreed to let me borrow it. 

“Do you want the rest of the trilogy too?” she asked me.

“There’s more?”

“There’s six movies total, but you don’t have to see them all.”

“I may need to--but I’ll start with this one.”

I was in and out of the kitchen for the rest of the movie. Kelsey went ahead and walked home without me. After the party, Roxanne gave me the movie disk for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope in a CD case. 

I was awake half the night wondering about what I had just seen. 

 

The next day, Kelsey let me borrow her laptop, since it had a CD/DVD drive. I watched the movie from start to finish. So this kid Luke had the last name of Skywalker. Obi-wan Kenobi was in exile on a desert planet after the rest of the Jedi had been hunted down. The Empire had replaced a Republic. By the end of the movie, Obi-wan was dead and Darth Vader had escaped into space. And Luke was training to be a Jedi.

On Sunday, I gave A New Hope back to Roxanne. She loaned me The Empire Strikes Back. Kelsey insisted that I play it on our apartment TV, and she hooked up her laptop. Our roommate Vanessa and her boyfriend joined us, but we had to shush her boyfriend repeatedly because this was my first time watching it. 

These movies--Star Wars--these were about my home galaxy. I was so sure of it before Empire was halfway over. 

But Darth Vader was Luke’s father? That meant his real name would be Skywalker. Was he Anakin Skywalker?

No. Not the Anakin I knew. A bit of a pain in the rear, but not a Sith Lord. Not that evil.

I didn’t get to watch Return of the Jedi until Tuesday night. It was just me and Kelsey home alone. Watching Return of the Jedi all the way through for the first time is an experience--you laugh, you cry, you get confused. The scenes where Luke talks to Obi-wan’s ghost, and then to Leia and Vader, I was leaning so far forward I was in danger of falling off the couch. 

I didn’t know what to think of Anakin Skywalker anymore.

“There’s more movies?” I asked Kelsey when the movie was finished. 

“There are,” said Kelsey. “Episodes one through three are about how Anakin Skywalker fell to the Dark Side.”

I laughed. “I’m sorry, it took three movies to do that?”

“Well, it’s more backstory and such to how he became a Jedi and who his wife was,” Kelsey said, leaning back. “I never liked those movies, though. They’re just Anakin making one stupid mistake after another, and they’re boring, and the dialogue is terrible.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t like Star Wars overall as much as some people,” said Kelsey. “I’m not a die-hard like Roxanne who likes to throw themed parties. I’m more into Harry Potter. You should read those books sometime.”

“I will,” I said. “But first I want to see the rest of these movies.”

“You can if you want to,” she said. She pulled out her phone to start texting someone. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love Star Wars, but I don’t eat sleep and breathe it. They’re just fun movies that I watch occasionally--well, just the original three. The prequels came later. But they suck.”

I felt that little nudge from the Force. It’s now or never.

“Kelsey, I want you to know that this is important to me. Watching Star Wars.”

She looked at me. “Why?”

“I need to tell you something. But can we do it in my bedroom, please, so we can have some more privacy?”

“Sure, we can do that.” We got off the couch and went to my room. I closed the door.

“First, I want to say thank you for being my friend and for listening to me. Second, I want to tell you that what I’m about to say isn’t going to be easy for you to believe.” I was standing up. Kelsey was sitting on my bed.

“Uh-huh.”

“My aunt and uncle--George and Jean Bridger. They’re not really my aunt and uncle. Me being the long-lost daughter of his brother is just a cover story. I was not raised in foster care in Colorado. Or in a drug addict’s house. Or a foster home.” I looked her in the eyes. “I am from outer space.”

Kelsey was silent.

“I came in a spaceship that crash-landed in George and Jean Bridger’s field. They saved me from the wreck and after that they decided to adopt me.”

“Okay.”

“I’ve been here for two and a half years now. But I’ve never figured out where I was from in relation to this planet until this last Sunday. Kelsey: I am...from that galaxy far far away. I don’t know how to prove it to you.” I paused, but Kelsey just stared at me awkwardly. So I had to keep talking to fill the silence. “I knew Luke’s father Anakin. And I knew his mother, too. I knew Obi-wan Kenobi. I’ve even met C-3P0 and R2-D2. I was a Jedi apprentice, a Padawan Learner. But then--I guess when Anakin turned to the Dark Side, we were betrayed.” 

That was when I started crying. My emotions were heightened after watching a very exciting movie, and come to think of it I was a few days away from my period. But finally knew the truth--some of the truth--of why I had been through some of the most horrible moments in my life.

Kelsey sat up on my bed and grabbed my shoulder.

“You don’t need to believe me just because I’m crying.” I gave her a weak smile. 

“Oh no, you’re fine,” said Kelsey.

I sat down. She grabbed my tissue box. “So anyway,” I said, taking a tissue, “I lost everything. My master, my galaxy, my powers, my friends. I can still feel the Force, you know, but I can’t use it to lift things or to jump or...choke people, hahaha, I didn’t choke people. I’ve never told Uncle George and Aunt Jean about this, I’ve never told them the details, and they don’t have a TV. Uncle George says we can’t afford cable. You’re the first person I’ve been completely honest with.”

“Tell me what happened.”

I told her about that day on Shent. When I mentioned the clone troopers’ betrayal, she spoke again: 

“Order sixty-six.”

“What?”

“Order sixty-six. It was a codename for their protocol to turn on the Jedi. It’s in Episode III. All the Jedi out in the galaxy were turned on.”

It clicked. “So it wasn’t only me and my master.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

I told her about my escape and flying too near the black hole, and then the crash. 

“Well, I don’t know a lot about astrophysics or black holes,” said Kelsey. “You could have simply cut through the Fourth Wall. Like you’re a character in that universe and you’ve made it into the real world.”

I nodded. “It’s a possibility. But it was the real world to me. I’m simply on the far side of the universe. One thing’s for sure, I’m too far away for the Empire to find me!” We both laughed. 

“But I don’t get it. Where did these movies come from?”

“The story’s from a guy named George Lucas. He just...wrote it like any other story, for all I know.”

“Yeah but...with some of those exact details. How is it possible?”

“I don’t know. I want to believe you,” said Kelsey. “What you’ve described sounds very real, and the fact of the matter is your pain is real. You can still feel the Force?”

“A little. It tells me things. Things that I don’t understand with just my normal senses. That’s how I’ve connected with my horses so well. And my dog.” I smirked at her through my tears. “Are you going to ask me to predict something for you? With the Force?”

“No. I’m not that petty.”

I smiled. “Of course you’re not. You don’t need proof, do you?”

“No,” Kelsey shook her head. “It would be nice, yes. I know what kind of a person you are. You wouldn’t lie about this. That’s the most important proof.”  
I hugged her. And I started crying again, crying from my grief but also overwhelming relief that I wasn’t alone anymore. 

But the next day, I made a phone call to Aunt Jean. 

“Did you and Uncle George ever see the Star Wars movies?” I asked her.

Jean had to think for a moment. “Yes, we have, but it was a long time ago. We saw the ones that came out in the seventies, but maybe not the newer ones.”

“Listen,” I licked my lips, “I’m from that universe where those movies take place. That galaxy far far away. That’s where I came from. I was a Jedi.”

“All right,” said Jean. “George and I guessed a few things. But we didn’t want to make you say anything before you were ready. I’m glad you’ve figured it out.”

Thursday night Kelsey and I borrowed The Phantom Menace from Roxanne. “I remember hearing about these events,” I told Kelsey towards the end of the film. “This was a couple years before I was brought to the Jedi temple myself. And my master was the same age group as Qui-gon, they were younglings together.”

“Cool,” said Kelsey. After the movie was over I told her a little about my trip to Naboo as a padawan.

Watching Attack of the Clones Friday night brought back a lot of memories of Anakin. Kelsey wondered why I was laughing so hard at the Coruscant taxi chase scene. 

Watching Anakin murder a village of Tusken Raiders made his fall to the Dark Side a little more plausible. It was just something he hid from everyone.

“Doesn’t it make you uncomfortable, though, how Padme just brushes it aside?” said Kelsey after the movie was over and we discussed it.

“It does,” I said. “I had a lot of respect for her. Just…”

“Not so much anymore?”

“No, just...some poor decisions on her part, I think. Nobody’s perfect. If there was one flaw in her character, it was falling for a guy like Anakin.”

“You just don’t like Anakin.”

“Well, didn’t we just watch? He really was an idiot in real life. Maybe not so much after getting married. But not the best guy.”

Kelsey laughed. 

I shook my head. “So that’s what happened on Geonosis.”

“Is that really how it played out?”

“All I ever heard was the Council went to rescue Obi-wan from being executed, and then the Clone Army bailed them out, and that was how the battle started. I never heard the full story. Come to think of it I don’t think anyone knew the full story. My master and I were on another planet at the time dealing with our own Separatist problems. And the Clones came to rescue us, too. I couldn’t tell you that THIS is exactly what happened. But there’s no reason to assume it didn’t.”

“Tell me more, please,” said Kelsey. 

“I’m not good at telling stories,” I said to her. “Besides, I thought you said you didn’t like Star Wars and these prequel movies were garbage.”

“Well, I said I didn’t like Star Wars as much as I liked Harry Potter,” said Kelsey. “But the fact that you’re from that universe, though--that makes it more interesting for me.”  
I told her a few stories about the Clone Wars while we got ready for bed.

Friday Night we watched Revenge of the Sith. Come to think of it I was not ready for that. Not emotionally or spiritually or mentally or anything. Kelsey was willing to stop it or at least pause it during the Order 66 scene, or even skip it. I bawled the whole way through but I kept on watching it. And then Mustafar. I was devastated. But the movie ended, and I felt a little better because I finally knew what had happened to me. I knew where I was from and why I’d had to leave--and what I’d narrowly escaped. Kelsey and I went to my room to talk when it was over.

“So everything that happened to me--it was Anakin’s fault, wasn’t it?” I said.

“It wasn’t just him, Emily,” said Kelsey. “It was Palpatine’s fault, too. He manipulated Anakin. You saw what happened.”

“Right, right, that’s assuming that this is exactly what happened. Which it might have been. Because I know Anakin and Palpatine were close. But that doesn’t absolve Anakin from the blame for what he did. He destroyed the Jedi Order. And he hurt Padme. And not to mention everything he did as Darth Vader. And his redemption at the end doesn’t change any of it. It wasn’t so much redemption, he just killed Sidious to save his son.”

“Well, let’s agree to disagree on that,” said Kelsey. “But it won’t help you to put blame on Sidious or Anakin or anybody else for what happened to you and the rest of the Jedi order. You have every right to feel hurt, and now that you know the truth, that hurt is going to feel fresh for a while. It might be a tall order, but you need to be open to the fact that someday you will need to forgive Anakin.” 

“I know,” I said. “Maybe a small part of me forgives him now.” I sighed. “It just hurts because Anakin and I--we’d kind of made up our differences before all of this happened. I even thought of him as a friend. I was wrong.”

“No, no. No. You were not wrong. For all his flaws, he was still a good person, in the end. You knew it. Even spending the rest of his life as a supervillain, that wasn’t who he really was.” Kelsey waited a moment, and she changed the subject. “How long have you been gone from your home galaxy?”

“It’s been two and a half years now, almost.”

“Right. But it’s been over thirty years since the first movie came out.”

“Yeah. And from the end of Revenge of the Sith to like, the end of Return of the Jedi, it’s another twenty, at least. That makes no sense.”

“Well, from what I’ve heard about Black Holes, when you get too close to one they can send you to different points in time, not just in space.”

“How do you know about Black Holes?” I asked Kelsey.

“I checked out a library book about them once. Of course we don’t know as much about them as people in your galaxy do.”

“No, we really don’t know anything about Black Holes, minus building rocket ships that can escape their gravity in a pinch. But really, we have the sense to stay away from them. You know, I shouldn’t have survived getting as close to the one that I almost ran into. I probably shouldn’t have survived Order 66, either.”

Kelsey squeezed me. “Aw, but if you hadn’t, then you wouldn’t be here to make me appreciate Star Wars better.” 

A day or so after that, I had the inspiration to invite Kelsey to come down to Bridger Ranch for a weekend. We got to ride the horses, but I also unlocked the shed where Uncle George and I had stuffed the charred remains of my escape vehicle. That was more than enough proof for her. The real highlight of the trip was going riding with her. And driving back and forth to Moab singing Broadway songs at the top of our lungs. 

To this day, Kelsey is the only person outside of Uncle George and Aunt Jean that I have trusted with my secret. Being from outer space is one thing. Being from a galaxy far far away that somebody made six movies about--that’s bound to get me another kind of attention that I don't want either.

 

I have no idea where this George Lucas person got the story for Star Wars. I have not read any of the books or comics or watched the spin-off Clone Wars TV show--I haven’t had the time or the interest. I’ve been working hard taking general education courses at college and getting to know Earthling culture a little more. 

I began writing these memoirs at the start of the summer break, and now it’s almost time for classes to start again. I’ll be headed back up to Orem in less than a week. Kelsey and I will be rooming together again. Sometimes when we had a little more time to ourselves, I would tell Kelsey more about life in my home galaxy and about fighting in the Clone Wars. She made the suggestion a few times that I write some of them down. So I’ve written them not only for her benefit, but for the benefit of anyone else who comes along that will want to hear them. And there will be other people, as time goes on, that I will open up to. The Force will point them out to me, I’m sure of it.

I don’t think it’s coincidence that I survived everything. But I don’t know what my purpose is yet on this planet. 

I have no intention of following the Jedi Path. I’m not in my home galaxy anymore and the Jedi Order is defunct, so there’s no need. I would like to fall in love sometime, and if I meet the right guy maybe I’ll marry him. I’ll live my life to the fullest. I have a family and friends. I can live in one place and travel somewhere for the heck of it, never be involved in diplomacy and fighting wars ever again. I know that somewhere in the netherworld of the Force that Master Nish is very appalled with me for thinking that poorly of the Jedi path, but he’ll just have to deal with it. I don’t feel any obligation to serve and protect, but as I’m considering my career options I find it very hard not to ponder a career path where my Force abilities could be useful. But I’m not sure I want to be a nurse that badly--the nursing program at UVU is kicking Kelsey’s butt. 

There are some things that I miss about being a Jedi. And some things I miss about my home galaxy. The backward technology has taken some getting used to. But I like this planet enough that, given the choice to leave, I would stay, or at least come back for a visit. 

To whoever reads this, I hope you find it uplifting and entertaining.

May the Force be With You.  
Emily Ereh Saw Yzil Bridger


End file.
